Working Out or Working, It’s All About Gainz

March 6, 2019

By Andre W. Lozano

For those who know me and see me at work every day, this blog will come as no surprise. For those who don’t know me, please understand that I correlate my sports/physical activity mindset with my work activity and everyday mindset. CrossFit is a big part of my life for many reasons. Starting this week and for the next five weeks, I will be focused on the 2019 CrossFit Games Open. I have the opportunity to put all my hard work from this past year to the test. I’m so excited. It will be so demanding, and I look forward to giving it my absolute best, every step of the way.

The funny thing is, that’s how I treat work life too. In my mind, I don’t call it work, although I do work for a company. Some days are “training” days (learning days) and other days training is over and it’s time to compete (execute, help a client solve complex branding challenging from multiple perspectives or participate in project pitch). The competitor in me is driven by competition days, whether at work or at the gym.

Why does it matter or why should your brand care? I ask you one question… what’s your brand mindset? Are you training or competing? Are you just training/learning but never executing? On the opposite end of the spectrum, are you always just executing (aka doing tactical activities over and over again without truly spending the time to understand why things are or are not working)?

I’m no expert, but I see it more often than not. Brands frozen from a mindset perspective, repeating the same action pattern and in conclusion not winning. Every brand needs the balance of training and competing to maximize their brand exposure and potential. You can apply this to life or fitness as well.

Let’s all strive to maximize our learning so our brand/work is primed for competition. During our competition, leave no doubt that our execution represents our best effort.

When properly prepared for competition, we don’t have to worry about failure. Failure is a unique growth opportunity. Repeating an execution with learnings applied gives us the chance to practice a new learned strategy, gauge our brand threshold, and walk away with powerful knowledge to apply to future work.